News

ITV’s £50m eco-contest ‘flawed’

CONTENDERS for a £50m lottery pot for eco-projects, to be handed out after a television poll, have attacked the competition as “flawed” and “crazy”.

They claim that ITV1 has pushed the contest, The People’s £50m Lottery Giveaway, to the margins of the schedule after initially indicating that it would run a high-profile series of events in peak time.

Now they fear that the hand-out may be determined not by a mass vote, conferring a popular mandate, but by the ability of the eco-projects to mobilise their databases of supporters and local employees.

The competition starts tomorrow evening when the bushcraft expert Ray Mears will argue the case for the Edge, an extension to the Eden Project that will act as a showcase for ideas to improve the environment.

On Tuesday, Lorraine Kelly will appeal on behalf of Connect2, a plan by the charity Sustrans to provide walkways and cycle routes